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Background 

The tradition of participatory design is to ensure that intended end users are engaged in the design process and bring with them their tacit and contextual knowledge to help shape the design towards the most useful and meaningful solution possible [5]. This process acknowledges the expertise of users and brings it early in the process. However, changes in information and communication technology, consumer culture, communities of interest, manufacturing processes, global economies and markets have brought new opportunities to the forefront.

The concept of a product being ready and complete and then purchased by a customer, is no longer the only valid model. Instead, many companies are creating strategies to create and manage a mode of continuous user driven innovation and make profit from it through co-design platforms and collaboration with lead users.

There are many studies and examples of innovative products and services that have grown to become what they are, not by a conscious design process (participatory or other) started by an organization, but by some form of horizontal and sometimes, collaborative endeavor [6]. Such examples include e.g. innovative social practices like a collectively organized way to walk children to school [2], new forms of sports and sports equipment, as well as new media genres like the weblog and associated software tools.

With the help of new technical infrastructures (social software, open APIs, rapid prototyping, cheap media production capabilities and devices) many communities, companies and organizations have implemented (or stumbled upon) new processes of design and innovation, and new business models that allow users and customers to build and shape their own innovative products and services. Thanks to those favorable conditions there is today an increasing amount of platforms, templates, and toolkits for customizing, designing, buying and sharing "products", ranging from digital media like videos and music samples to t-shirts, shoes and furniture that would not have come to be, had end-users themselves not been involved in creating them. 

The phenomenon of open products, open source and user generated innovation [6] are not of merely customization or personalization, because all of these actions take place after a company has decided what the basics are, and which products and services and experiences they are willing to hand over to end users. What seems to us is that these emerging processes of innovation both confirm many of the empirical findings of participatory design projects and pose new and interesting challenges for its practice.

What are the design strategies required to engage with products, services and experiences that are to be completed and built upon by users? How can we design for and with co-designers? How to scale up participation and what are the favorable conditions? What social and ethical considerations are involved? What methods and practices might be involved when development and use become connected? What are the characteristics of markets, companies, communities, products, services and experiences that cater this phenomenon? We invite the community to reflect and explore on this emerging trend by collecting examples, sharing experiences and mapping their implications on (but not limited to):

- Openness in the products and process:  Designing so that end products can still be co-created / co-designed when in use:  old fashioned construction bricks mixed with software to construct robots, packed in a kit designed with the help of a handful of customers (Lego’s mindstorms new series [1]. A virtual world that gives its users (referred to as "residents") tools to add to and edit its world and participate in its economy where the majority of the content is resident-created and they retain its copyright (Second Life [3]. New types of engagement with media and social issues via web services built by APIs from other web services. 

- Platforms that enable creative users to share and communicate: places to design, distribute and sell own creations – without the traditional investments (Spreadshirt, Threadless, blurb, Zazzle, Ponoko);

- infrastructures that enable users to share, produce, mix and distribute new contents (YouTube, WordPress, Blogger);

- new ways to collaborate with various kinds of potential customers such as lead users.

1.    Blomberg J., Evenson S., Service Innovation and Design, CHI '06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 22-27,
2.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_bus
3.    http://secondlife.com/
4.    Prahalad, C.K. & Ramaswamy, V., The future of Competition, Co-creating Unique Value with Customers, HBS Press, Boston, Mass, 2004.
5.    Schuler, D. & Namioka, A. (1993). Participatory design: Principles and practices. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
6.    Von Hippel, E Democratizing Innovation. MIT Press: Cambridge, 2005.

 maintained by: Andrea (Arki research / Media Lab / University of Art and Design Helsinki) 2008